‘I’m sorry,’ said Byars quietly. The others also murmured muted words of sympathy as if suddenly and painfully aware of how helpless they all were against the virus.
‘This is bound to affect morale among the nurses,’ said Miss Christie. ‘Protective clothing is all well and good in a laboratory, where the virus sits obediently in a glass test tube, but when the reservoir is a delirious patient with flailing arms and blood and vomit leaking out of him, that is a completely different situation.’
‘I don’t think we can speak highly enough of your nurses, Miss Christie,’ said Byars. ‘And I am only too aware that the medical staff in this situation are largely redundant. The nurses are the only factor standing between the patients and death. Please make sure that they are aware of our high regard for them, and pass on our thanks.’
Miss Christie nodded and said that she would.
‘The papers aren’t exactly helping when it comes to morale,’ said one of Cane’s team. ‘Have you seen the latest?’ He held up a front page that said, ‘Killer Virus Stalks City’. ‘Talk about scaremongering.’
‘People are beginning to panic,’ said Morely. ‘You can feel it in the air. Fear is breeding anger, and they’re looking for someone to blame.’
‘Perhaps an appeal for calm?’ suggested one of the senior nurses. ‘Local radio and television?’
‘You’d be as well holding up a big sign that says, “Panic!”’ said Caroline Anderson. ‘People tend not to pay attention to that sort of thing any more. They’ve been conned too often in the past.’
‘And what has the good Dr Dunbar come up with this morning, might I ask?’ said Cane.
‘Almost as little as you and your team, Professor,’ replied Steven, but he was pleased to see that Cane still had some fight left in him. ‘But I do have a lead that I’m following up, for the Manchester outbreak at least.’
Cane swallowed and seemed embarrassed at the revelation. ‘Are you going to share this with us, or do Sci-Med investigators prefer the Lone Ranger approach?’
‘Whatever gets the job done, Professor,’ replied Steven evenly. ‘Ann Danby had a boyfriend. I’m currently trying to find out who he was.’
Cane looked at the other members of his team, who shook their heads in unison. ‘My people seem to disagree,’ he said. ‘That’s an avenue we’ve already explored thoroughly.’
‘She kept it pretty much a secret but she did have one,’ insisted Steven. ‘I can even tell you his name; it’s Victor. He’s almost certainly married and has a high-profile job here in Manchester.’
‘But you’re the only one who knows about this Victor,’ said Cane with a barely disguised sneer in his voice.
‘No, I think a couple of other people do,’ replied Steven evenly. ‘It’s just a question of persuading them to confide in me.’
Caroline Anderson looked at Steven wide-eyed, as if suddenly realising why she had been asked to put pressure on Pelota. Steven acknowledged her look with a slight shrug and a raising of his eyebrows.
‘And are you proposing that this man gave the disease to Miss Danby, Doctor?’ asked Cane.
‘I think it’s entirely possible. I can’t say more than that.’
‘Then I’m sure we’ll all await developments with bated breath,’ said Cane.
‘As it appears to be the only lead we have, I wish you luck, Doctor,’ said Byars. There was a murmur of agreement from all the others except Cane and his people, who had gone into a huddle to murmur among themselves. ‘Might I remind everyone,’ continued Byars, ‘that we are all in this together. There is absolutely no room for petty feuds and academic jealousies.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Cane, who obviously knew that the implied criticism had been levelled at him.
‘We must keep our nerve and pull together if we are to defeat this thing,’ said Byars.
‘I’m afraid that matters may be taken out of all our hands in the next few days,’ said Sinclair, speaking for the first time that morning. ‘My masters tell me that a government crisis-management team is being put together as we speak. If things don’t improve by the weekend in terms of case numbers, they’ll be brought in to take over control. There’s also talk of asking the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, for help.’
‘You’re bringing in the Americans? That’s going over the top, don’t you think?’ complained Cane.
Sinclair gave his practised diplomatic smile and said, ‘I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets in telling you that HMG does not want to be seen dragging its heels in this affair.’
‘So they’ve come up with a grand gesture?’ said Cane.
‘CDC Atlanta have more experience than anyone else in handling outbreaks of these African viruses,’ countered Sinclair.
Caroline Anderson collared Steven when the meeting broke up. ‘So that’s why you asked for the harassment of a law-abiding citizen,’ she said.
‘Ann Danby had dinner at his restaurant with the elusive Victor the week before she died,’ explained Steven. ‘Pelota knows who he is but refuses to tell me. Have your people been to see him yet?’
‘Yes,’ replied Caroline. ‘He wasn’t at all amused.’
‘Good,’ said Steven. ‘What worries me most right now is the possibility that Victor is a healthy carrier of the disease and doesn’t even know it.’
‘That would be the stuff of nightmares, all right,’ agreed Caroline, ‘but carrier status has never been shown for filoviruses.’
‘I’m clinging to that straw too,’ said Steven. ‘But that would mean either that he was incubating the disease when he gave it to Ann — in which case why hasn’t he turned up as a patient? — or that he was recovering from it and didn’t even know he’d had it, which sounds equally unlikely.’
‘Beats me,’ said Caroline.
‘Let’s rattle Pelota’s cage a bit more,’ said Steven.
Things had not improved by the weekend: in fact, they had got worse. Thirty new cases had been admitted to City General between Thursday and Sunday, stretching the nursing staff and ward facilities to breaking point. The only comfort was that all the new cases were contacts of known cases; there were no new wildcards. The depressing thing from Caroline Anderson’s point of view was that three of the new cases were contacts of the girl who had broken quarantine to go to the disco.
The government crisis-management team arrived on Saturday, as did an ‘advisory’ team from CDC Atlanta — two virologists and an epidemiologist. Steven decided to stay out of what he thought might be a recipe for internecine strife but was pleased to see that one of the crisis-management team was Fred Cummings. He arranged to meet him at his hotel on Sunday evening.
By Sunday, the newspapers had decided to upgrade the outbreak to epidemic status. They ignored the official figures required for such an accolade, but no one argued too much. People were dying, so what you called it was irrelevant. Five had died in the last two days and eleven more were on the critical list. Politicians had now decided that the press attention being focused on Manchester merited their presence, and fluttered northwards like moths to a flame to voice their opinions to a frightened public. While government ministers praised the relevant local authorities, opposition spokesmen accused them of bungling ineptitude and cover-ups.
Steven was watching a regional news bulletin on TV in his hotel room before leaving to meet Fred Cummings when a debate between a Labour health minister and a Manchester Conservative MP, introduced as the ‘shadow spokesman on health matters’, became very heated. The Labour man maintained that the outbreak had been handled in textbook fashion from the outset. The Conservative asserted that he had ‘proof positive’ that it had not, and that the spread of the disease could be blamed fairly and squarely on the shortcomings of the Public Health Service in the city.
When challenged, he started to relate the story of the disco girl. Steven closed his eyes in dread.
‘How could a girl who was suffering from the early stages of a killer disease, and whom the authorities had already listed as a known contact, very much at risk of contracting the disease, be allowed to visit a crowded city disco?’ the MP wanted to know. ‘And afterwards, what steps did the authorities take to warn the people at risk in the disco? None, absolutely none.’